Aging X-ennial seeks new electronic music.

March 3, 2018 10:15 AM

Modern electronic music suggestions for an X-ennial who's been living in a cave since 2001?

I used to listen to techno, as we called it back then, in the late 90's. My favorite was Orbital, which was just the right mix of melodic and cerebral with a fast enough beat to keep me concentrating on my work. Then I remember reading ecstatic reviews of artists like Jim O'Rourke and Fennesz, but finding their work disappointingly opaque and inaccessible. I guess I like music that has actual songs. (Prodigy and Underworld, on the other hand, were maybe a little too accessible.) And then I had kids and sort of stopped discovering new music for a while. What would I like that's been released in the last 5 years or so?

posted by Ralston McTodd to Media & Arts (18 answers total)

Best answer: Perhaps too ethereal compared to your examples, but I recently discovered Zola Blood and am much better for it.
posted by drdanger at 10:26 AM on March 3, 2018

Best answer: Some random suggestions (mostly fairly downtempo and melodic):
Trentemøller - The Last Resort (a bit older than 5 years)
Frank Bretschneider Flutter Flitter
Kangding Ray - Acto
Tycho - A Walk
... and Aphex Twin - Syro (but that one was hard to miss)
posted by swordfishtrombones at 10:35 AM on March 3, 2018 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Jon Hopkins - especially the Insides and Immunity albums.
Bicep have a definite 90s throwback sound
Daniel Avery - Drone Logic (from the album of the same name - one of my favourite albums of the last few years)
Kelly Lee Owens - Anxi from her self-titled album from last year, which was super-great. Like if Cocteau Twins made a techno record.
posted by parm at 11:06 AM on March 3, 2018 [3 favorites]

Best answer: Also: Resident Advisor is the absolute gold-standard #1 place on the internet for electronic music new/reviews. It's incredibly broad, but also pretty easy to laser in on the stuff you like.
posted by parm at 11:09 AM on March 3, 2018 [3 favorites]

Best answer: Noisia is pretty great
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 1:21 PM on March 3, 2018 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Some recent favorites of mine:

Bonobo (here's their song Kerala)
Boards Of Canada (here's their song Split Your Infinities)
Kelly Lee Owens (here's her song Bird)
Forest Swords (here's their song The Highest Flood)
Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith (here's her song Rare Things Grow)
Jamie xx (here's his song Gosh)
DJ Shadow still got it (here a song from his latest The Mountain Will Fall)
Actress (here's his song XX2RME)
Jlin (here's her song Carbon 7)

and this isn''t technically "electronic" but they fill the same emotional space for me; YMMV:
Brad Mehldau and Mark Guiliana's "Taming the Dragon" album (here's them performing "Hungry Ghost" from that album)
posted by eustacescrubb at 2:08 PM on March 3, 2018 [3 favorites]

Best answer: Wholeheartedly second Actress and Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith.

Electronic things I would add: Tzusing, who has been my angry running go-to for a while, Oneohtrix Point Never (latest album Garden of Delete is probably the most accessible), Gigi Masin (his album Talk to the Sea is exquisite), and Laurel Halo (her album Quarantine is one of my favourites).
posted by nerdfish at 3:04 PM on March 3, 2018

Best answer: Techno is potentially a pretty broad genre, so I'm going to use that as an excuse to dump all my favorite things into one comment.

Mr. Oizo - All Wet (2016)
Simian Mobile Disco - Welcome to Sideways (2016)
Mr. Kitty - A.I. (2017)
Die Antwoord - Made by God (2017)
Crystal Castles - Amnesty (I) (2016)
Massive Attack - Ritual Spirit (2016)

And if you're going to listen to Aphex Twin and Boards of Canada you may as well listen to Autechre. They're all great.
posted by mammal at 5:58 PM on March 3, 2018 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Juana Molina makes good stuff. In the Lassa from her album Halo, released in 2017.
posted by bananana at 7:18 PM on March 3, 2018 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Rhye is pretty good.
Todd Terje is fun.
posted by smallsociety at 7:51 PM on March 3, 2018

Best answer: Hello! I'm a similar age with similar tastes and stopped following electric music for a while. Having recently got back into it, some stuff I really like is

Moderat: Moderat I

Simian Mobile Disco: Unpatterns

Leftfield: Alternative Light Source

Rival Consoles: Howl

Lone: Levitate

Boys Noize: Mayday

Alexsi Perälä: Paradox

This one might be a bit harder than you are after: Zamilska:
Untune

This is a bit older than five years, it's from 2006, but I basically recommend this to everyone: Ellen Alien & Apparat: Orchestra of Bubbles

Resident Advisor is definitely your source for this kind of stuff. I've currently got 15 Years Of the Bunker on heavy repeat that I read about on there only this week
posted by fatfrank at 1:48 AM on March 4, 2018 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Lots of great recommendations here. I would add Burial's Untrue and Plaid's The Digging Remedy from 2016
posted by softlord at 1:42 PM on March 4, 2018

Response by poster: Wow, thanks for all the recommendations! I'm really looking forward to going through all these.
posted by Ralston McTodd at 1:54 PM on March 4, 2018

Response by poster: Really digging the Moderat and Kelly Lee Owens so far.
posted by Ralston McTodd at 1:58 PM on March 4, 2018

Best answer: I made a youtube playlist of most of the things linked here (except a couple of already-playlists)
posted by secretseasons at 2:00 PM on March 4, 2018 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Haven't seen him mentioned yet, so:

Four Tet
Four Tet
Four Tet

My favourite electronic artist of the last decade. He can go from straight up bangers, to jungle, to 40 minute contemplative pieces

And yeah, Boards of Canada of course...and Burial.
posted by sauril at 5:56 PM on March 4, 2018 [1 favorite]

Best answer: If you like Moderat (which is a collaboration), you will probably like the members individual groups, Apparat and Modeselektor.
posted by softlord at 7:04 AM on March 10, 2018 [1 favorite]

I have had the same question, with the same bands listed from the same timeframe. When I've asked friends, they've given a lot of answers on this list, but there is so much new here.

Here is a spotify list I've put together with either the song listed, or if just an artist/album listed, their most popular song on spotify.

If you use it, you can go to "playlist radio" and discover more like it.

Thanks for the question and the answers!
posted by bensherman at 10:56 AM on April 6, 2018